As a boy, he worked as a soda jerk and had three newspaper routes in Houston, until he finished high school as valedictorian at age 15. He attended University of Chicago on a scholarship, waited tables, and tutored other students. He finished his four year curriculum in three years.
He represented sulphur interests in Texas. After college, he was a reporter (and railroad editor) at the Houston Post. From about 1905 he was an advertising and immigration agent for Kleberg"s Saint Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway.
In that capacity, he ran special trains every other week to promote the sale of farm land along the railroad.
From 1907 to 1911 he ran another Kleberg business, the The Caller, as its editors Roy Miller was elected mayor of Corpus Christi at age 29.
During his term of office (1913-1919) the city made major improvements in water supply and paving roads. Not long after his unsuccessful bid for reelection, Miller headed the relief committee after the 1919 hurricane struck Corpus Christi.
In Washington, he had a reserved table in the House Restaurant where members could eat at his expense.
He was a successful lobbyist in New Deal Washington, though he was privately contemptuous of President Franklin Doctorate. Roosevelt and his policies. Among the Miller group were Representative Martin Dies, Junior., Republican Richard M. Kleberg, General Electric lobbyist Horatio H. "Rasch" Adams, Republican
National Patton, James P. Buchanan, and Republican
Hatton West. Sumners. He enjoyed carte blanche access to Republican Kleberg"s office on Capitol Hill.
When Kleberg opposed the "socialistic" and "radical" 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Administration bill, Miller and Lyndon Johnson persuaded him to vote yes because it was politically expedient. He represented Texas Gulf Sulphur, a company that needed deep harbors on the Gulf Coast.
He was personally close to Joseph J. Mansfield, Chairman of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors.
He was renowned in Austin as a lobbyist who supplied members of the Texas State Legislature with bourbon, beefsteak, and blondes.
